Synthetic Biology Is Reshaping Crops, Cancer Treatments, and Drug Discovery Through Precision Genetic Engineering

Synthetic biology is no longer a distant promise or a niche academic pursuit. It is rapidly becoming one of the most powerful toolkits for addressing some of the most urgent challenges in agriculture, medicine, and drug development. A recent discussion with Mo Khalil, the Hok Lam and Kathleen Kam Wong Professor of Bioengineering and Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), offers a detailed look at how this field is evolving and why it matters right now.

Khalil joined Harvard SEAS in 2025, after previously serving as an Associate Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Boston University. His research spans synthetic biology, systems biology, genetic and epigenetic regulation, microbial ecology and evolution, and automation-driven technology development. While these areas may sound diverse, Khalil emphasizes that his lab’s work is united by one core idea: building genetic circuits that allow scientists to understand, control, and reprogram biology with precision.

The Common Thread Behind Diverse Synthetic Biology Projects

At first glance, Khalil’s research projects might seem unrelated—ranging from crop engineering to cancer immunotherapy to yeast-based drug discovery platforms. However, the unifying theme is the design and deployment of synthetic genetic circuits.

These circuits function much like electronic circuits, except they operate inside living cells. By installing carefully designed genetic programs into organisms, researchers can control when genes turn on or off, how cells respond to environmental signals, and how biological systems behave over time. According to Khalil, this approach allows scientists not only to study biology more deeply, but also to actively redesign it for real-world applications.

The ultimate goal is ambitious but clear: use engineered biology to tackle global food insecurity, climate stress, cancer, and the slow pace of traditional drug discovery.

Reinventing Crop Engineering for a Changing Climate

One of the most pressing areas where synthetic biology could have an enormous impact is agriculture. Modern farming systems are under increasing strain from climate change, soil degradation, and a rapidly growing global population. While plant biotechnology has made progress over the past few decades, Khalil points out that plant genomes are notoriously difficult to engineer.

Plants often have large, complex genomes, and scientists do not always know which genetic changes will lead to improved traits such as drought tolerance, disease resistance, or higher yields. This uncertainty makes plant engineering slow, expensive, and unpredictable.

Khalil’s lab is working on new genome engineering and synthetic biology tools designed specifically to make plant modification faster, more reliable, and more scalable. The focus is not just on editing individual genes, but on building systems that allow researchers to test many genetic variations efficiently and understand how they affect plant performance.

By accelerating discovery, these tools could help scientists design crops that are more resilient to heat, water scarcity, and other environmental stresses, while also improving productivity. In the long term, this kind of innovation could play a crucial role in maintaining global food supplies as climate conditions continue to shift.

Precision Control in Cancer Immunotherapy

Synthetic biology is also transforming human health, particularly in the field of cancer treatment. Khalil’s lab is deeply involved in improving cell-based therapies, with a special focus on CAR-T cells.

CAR-T therapy works by extracting a patient’s immune cells, genetically modifying them to recognize cancer cells, and then reinfusing them into the body. This approach has already produced remarkable results, curing certain cancers that were previously considered untreatable.

Despite these successes, CAR-T therapies face significant limitations. They can cause dangerous side effects, struggle to adapt to complex tumors, and are currently effective against only a narrow range of cancers.

Khalil believes synthetic biology can help overcome these challenges. By installing synthetic genetic circuits into immune cells, researchers can program more precise control over how these cells behave. This could make therapies safer, more adaptable, and effective against a wider variety of cancers—and potentially even other diseases beyond cancer.

Rather than relying on static genetic modifications, these engineered immune cells could respond dynamically to signals in the body, adjusting their activity in real time.

Turning Yeast Into Drug Discovery Factories

Another fascinating direction in Khalil’s work involves using yeast cells—organisms best known for their role in baking, brewing, and fermentation—as powerful discovery platforms.

Yeast is easy to grow, genetically tractable, and highly adaptable, making it an ideal system for experimentation. Khalil’s lab is exploring how yeast can be reprogrammed to discover and evolve new molecules, including antibodies that target biological pathways previously considered unreachable.

In this approach, yeast cells act as miniature factories that combine evolution, computation, and molecular engineering. By rapidly generating and testing vast numbers of molecular variants, researchers can identify promising drug candidates much faster than with traditional methods.

This strategy has the potential to unlock new treatments for cancer, cardiovascular disease, and other complex disorders, significantly expanding the scope of what is possible in drug discovery.

Why Synthetic Biology Is Gaining Momentum

At its core, synthetic biology is about making biology easier to engineer. Traditional biological research often involves observing natural systems and making incremental changes. Synthetic biology, by contrast, treats living systems as platforms that can be designed, built, and optimized.

Several factors are accelerating progress in this field:

• Advances in DNA synthesis and gene editing, including CRISPR-based tools
• Automation and high-throughput experimentation, which speed up testing cycles
• Artificial intelligence and computational modeling, which help predict how genetic circuits will behave

Together, these technologies allow researchers to move faster from ideas to real-world applications.

The Broader Impact of Synthetic Biology

Beyond the specific projects in Khalil’s lab, synthetic biology is influencing a wide range of industries. In agriculture, it supports sustainable farming and climate resilience. In medicine, it enables personalized therapies and smarter immune treatments. In pharmaceuticals, it promises faster, more targeted drug development.

As Khalil emphasizes, the guiding principle is simple but powerful: by understanding biological systems deeply enough to redesign them, we can achieve breakthroughs that benefit both human health and the environment.

Synthetic biology is still a young field, but its trajectory suggests that it will play a central role in shaping the future of science, medicine, and global sustainability.

Research reference:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41587-022-01277-0